“At the University of Wisconsin, frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner railed against football, calling for its prohibition or at least its suspension, and tried to mobilize administrators and professors against it. On the night of March 27, when a rumor hit campus that football would be banned, hundreds of students took to the streets, chanting “Death to the faculty!” They surrounded Turner’s home. The professor faced them on his porch. “When can we have football?” shouted a student. “When you can have a clean game,” he yelled back. Turner tried to engage the young men, but they replied with catcalls. Later in the evening, they built a bonfire. The fire department showed up as the mob tried to burn three professors in effigy. The firefighters managed to save the last one. It was labeled 'Prof. Turner.'”

Fascinating! Pro-football protests! These effigies were burned, not hung. We've been debating about whether the Prosser effigy was actually hung, since it is sitting down. Obviously, there are many ways to torment an effigy. There is hanging. Burning. And, as commenter EDH said:

The garrote, unlike a proper hanging, kills by suffocation, so it is, in fact, much closer to the choking accusation leveled by Justice Prosser's character assassins.

But enough about effigies. Let's go back to the history of football. Here's Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine interviewing John J. Miller about "The Big Scrum." A very substantive interview with crisp, quick speaking, so... worth clicking.

Good piece. Ironically, the forward pass that was implemented to help thwart the violence is now where the most violence occurs. HBO did a piece and some players think that if you do away w/ face mask that will help lower the vicious hits. If you have to stick your face into a player you will think twice.

So, after Hornung was canned, Notre Dame did just that under Lou Holtz and won a national championship.

The dilemma of college football, which Reason and Miller managed to avoid remains the same. At the major college programs, 80% or more of the starters are blacks who really don't qualify academically to be in college.

Here's a really radical proposal which would change the shape of athletics at every level.

Stop giving blacks a free ride when it comes to academics. Don't let them play unless they perform in class. This is what is expected of white guys. Why not demand the same from blacks?

My alma mater, the University of Illinois, just went through a tawdry melodrama by recruiting Jereme Richmond for its basketball program. Richmond signed a letter of intent to attend the U of I when he was still an eighth grader. At that time, he was looked upon as the next Lebron James.

I suggest you take a look at the saga of Richmond. He never did the academic work in grade school or high school. God alone knows how he actually got a high school degree.

Richmond lasted one year at Illinois, where he was a thorn in the side of the university. He did no academic work. He was a demanding, sulking bastard. And, he announced at the end of his Freshman year that he was going to the NBA.

Fortunately, for the law of karma, the dunce didn't get drafted.

Richmond, who is black, is the classic example of the black athlete who never faces the demand to perform even on the most minimal academic level.

Maybe it would make more sense to stop allowing that, rather than to spin off college athletic programs into semi-pro farm teams.

So just to be clear here, your take is that every white athlete (the 20 percent of starters you claim) are all performing at the same level as the rest of the student body?

Oh, certainly not.

The Phys Ed. department at the major universities devises a phony set of courses for the football and basketball scholarship players. You barely have to be sentient to pass. All you have to do is show up and try.

Funny. I was watching The Virginian on Netflix and they had an episode with Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders (The Virginian goes to fetch two of his cowboys and Teddy managed to talk him into going to Cuba too).

My seven year old watched it a few minutes and said, "Oh that is Col. Roosevelt, he lives at the Museum*."

That was a great episode. It's funny when you see it because they had so few extras so they had to film it in a condensed form.

If you want your son to get a real good idea about the Rough Riders rent the TV movie Rough Riders with a great performance by that maniac Gary Busey as General Joe Wheeler and Mr. Big as a New York swell. It showed how cowboys and indians and New York Society boys all joined together to kill little brown people to make Cuba safe for Meyer Lansky.

"...If you want your son to get a real good idea about the Rough Riders rent the TV movie Rough Riders with a great performance by that maniac Gary Busey as General Joe Wheeler.."

Wheeler was well into his dotage in Cuba. He was a brilliant boy-general (Confederate) during the Civil War.He was supposed to have yelped during as the Spaniards retreated "We've finally got those Yankees on the run!".

And, yes. There have always been crazy people at the fringes of politics, and religion. Who thought they could force their radical views on others.

It's just another attempt at Prohibition.

And, if you want to have fun with this subject ... as in FUND-E-MENTAL. Look up Rushdoony. The lunatic who birthed the idea that Jesus wants America to be run along the lines of "old fashioned" killer religion. Where you'd stone gays. Catholics. Etc.

It doesn't sell.

But there's always somebody you're gonna find that will take on the establishment.

Before women voted. And, then, again, "afta."

When I was young, and the JETS, were called THE TITANS. You'd go to a game. And, there was an ambulance parked on the field.

They expected injuries.

Just as they do in hockey. Where the ice turns red ... because men can use a hockey stick to push a puck. And, to use to hit an opponent.

The Greeks did this. But when they played all their players were nude.

Funny,a number of years ago an old timer (a retired history professor) told me over a beer at State Street Brats (the old Brathaus)that Fredrick Turner's objection to football had nothing to do with injuries, but was because he saw it as undercutting America's hard-won frontier individuality. His solution, for which he never got credit, was the forward pass. The forward pass, he thought, would restore individuality to the game. But when his proposal fell on deaf ears, he began his campaign against the game.

You mean the placement of the comments box? No, it's old but I had to turn it off before. There was some problem. I can't remember what the problem was now though, so I'm trying it again. We'll see what happens. If you encounter trouble, let me know. I think it looks a lot better!